


The Many Proposals of Nick Burkhardt

by silveradept



Category: Grimm (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 06:34:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6645340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveradept/pseuds/silveradept
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick proposes to Adalind. Repeatedly. Differently. Humorously. Maybe one of these times she'll say yes?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Many Proposals of Nick Burkhardt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OhWilloTheWisp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OhWilloTheWisp/gifts).



"You know," Nick said to Adalind, as he was washing the dishes from dinner, "now that we have Kelly, there's a few things that we should talk about."

"Like?" Adalind was wary. Nick didn't usually initiate conversations, and when he did, they were usually about the latest Wesen incident that had happened in Portland or the surrounding area.

"Well," Nick said, absently rubbing the back of his head, "we should probably talk about what we're going to do if Kelly takes after me...or you."

Adalind didn't like the thought of her son inheriting the powers of the Grimm, with their ability to see Wesen in their woge forms. It would paint a target on his back, she thought, and it brought up the unpleasant possibility that her son might one day try to kill his mother.

Kelly inheriting Wesen status didn't seem much better, though - Zauberbiests were also dangerous, power-hungry, and skilled at magic. That, too, seemed like a situation where Kelly might try to kill his mother. After Diana, Adalind was hoping that, against the odds and their genes, Kelly might turn out to be a normal human boy, with the Grimm and Wesen parts canceling each other out.

Nick was waiting for her to look at him again, pot dripping into the sink while she was alone with her thoughts. She smiled at him as a signal to continue. There was something attractive about a man who was okay with doing the dishes, she thought.

"Portland is a progressive place," he said, almost apologetically, "and lots of people live here in all sorts of arrangements, but the are just some things that are easier when..."

"Yes?"

The next words came out as a rush, as if Nick were trying you get them out and done as fast as possible. "...when a kid has parents that are married to each other." After finishing, he started to intently dry the next pot in front of him, so that Adalind could ignore or mishear what he had said, if she wanted to, and not bring up the subject in reply.

"Nick? Are you...asking me to marry you?" Adalind felt confused. Nick had been very explicit before about how he would be a father to Kelly, but that he had no interest at all in marrying her, for both her and Kelly's safety. What was this sudden change about?

After a long silence, where Nick and Adalind tried to read each other's reaction to the question, Nick was the first to speak. "Yes. We'll go down to the courthouse tomorrow to apply for a marriage license, we'll swear it out in front of a justice of the peace, and then Kelly will be taken care of in case one of us dies."

Adalind was shocked enough that she might have woged, but her initial reaction quickly gave way to anger as she processed what Nick was saying. "No!" she told him, "Nick, I am _not_ getting married you just to protect my son! If I wanted to do _that_ , I would have pressured...Diana's father...to get married as soon as I knew I was pregnant with her!" Adalind couldn't bring herself to mention Sean's name at that point, with all of the history and pain he had brought into her life. "I'm not going to have a courthouse wedding, dammit. If you want to marry me, Nick, you're going to have to convince me you want to do it, and not just because you think it would be better for Kelly. I've seen too many parents that hate each other staying together for the kids."

Nick set the last dish on the drying rack and turned to her. "I realize it's not the wedding of your dreams, but I don't think there are a lot of people in either of our communities that would want to come as guests to a wedding between a Grimm and a Hexenbeist."

"You don't even know if I have dreams about a wedding." Adalind felt hurt, even though what Nick had said was true. At his skeptical look, she pressed on. "I do. So what if many of those dreams were nightmares about Grimm barging into the church and slaughtering everyone there? I wanted to look beautiful in white as my blood ran down the steps of the altar, in the embrace of my true love."

Nick smiled at Adalind and slipped his arms around her waist. "I would have expected a Hexenbeist wedding to end with the bride devouring the groom, like a praying mantis."

Adalind woged in front of him, showing him the face that had sent many men fleeing in terror when they thought of her as a helpless and small woman. "You may now kiss the bride," she said, in a perfect imitation of every television and movie priest they had both seen.

He laughed, maybe a bit nervously, and then they both started to get ready for bed.

She woke up the next day to a larger-than-life-size teddy bear, fresh from a traveling carnival, staring back at her, holding a comically undersized card with the question "Marry me?" on it.

Adalind only remembered screaming at the large object in the room, which promptly exploded into a cloud of fluff and fake fur. She barely managed to hide the evidence before Nick came home from work that evening, and made the excuse that Kelly had almost pulled the bear down on himself, so she had to get rid of it. He seemed to accept that, and that her answer was still no.

The next day, he left a printout of a ring on the table with the same question written under it. She looked at the ring, checked online to see its cost, since he had blacked it out on the paper, and wrote "Cheapskate" on the printout. She allowed herself a small hint of joy when she heard him audibly get disappointed at her response when he came home that night.

The next day, she learned that Hank, Munroe, and Nick only needed a fourth to make a decent barbershop quartet as they serenaded her about the virtues of marriage, with implications about the size of Nick's penis that she wasn't sure any of them actually realized was there. He at least acted embarrassed when she explained it to him that night, along with her customary refusal of his proposal.

At a certain point, it seemed to him like she was more interested in seeing what kind of creative proposal he could come up with the next day than in seriously considering his offer, but each time she said no, he learned a little more about what she liked, what was cute, and what was an immediate disqualifier. A couple months in, he thought he had it. She'd seemed charmed by his attempt at spelling out the proposal in macaroni and cheese on her dinner plate, right until Kelly decided he was ready to eat and overturned the entire plate in a bid for attention. The food (and mood) thus killed, Nick went back to the drawing board.

After more than a year, he came home from work, took Kelly to Rosalie for babysitting, and took her out for a night that started with dinner and ended with Hank taking a would-be flasher in for the night as the perp screamed in agony about the woman that had laughed at him and then kicked him repeatedly in very sensitive areas with a gleam in her eye. Flush with adrenaline, she turned to Nick just in time to see him get down on one knee, with a ring box in his hand. He opened the box to show a ring that looked old, with a lovely arrangement of rubies in the shape of a heart.

"Adalind Schade, will you marry me, so I don't have to worry that you'll do that to me?"

She laughed. "I would do much worse than that to you if you hurt me. I think, however, that you've managed to finally charm your way into my heart, Nick Burkhardt."

She took the ring from him and put it on her hand.

"Yes, I will marry you."


End file.
